I guess this is off-topic here, but I installed and configured dovecot (IMAP server) and offlineimap (IMAP synchronization) so I can read/delete/manipulate my e-mails (for now only gmail) using both modest and alpine

By using offlineimap we have all the flexibility we want in deciding when to synchronize and when not. I'm using now the built-in option of autorefreshing every 10 minutes. You can also run it as a normal program (not a daemon), so that e.g. one could set up and ifup script that executes it depending on which connection has been established (e.g. if WLAN, which one, if GPRS, depending on whether you are roaming and/or how much you've used of your data plan, etc.)

I still have to make a script for providing maemo-style notifications when a new mail comes in (for now modest is doing that, but once I remove modest, I will need to do that in my offlineimap wrapper).

Pretty cool I dare say